Authortieto

Authortieto is a term used in information science and digital humanities to describe the body of knowledge associated with the creation of a work and the author’s role in that process. The word combines “author” with a root akin to knowledge in Nordic language traditions, signaling a focus on what authors know about their own work beyond the observable text. In practice, authortieto encompasses documentation of sources, decisions, methods, revisions, and contextual notes that illuminate how and why a work came to be in its final form.

The concept distinguishes between traditional metadata and the more process-oriented information that reveals the author’s reasoning, research notes, methodological choices, and provenance. Proponents argue that capturing authortieto can enhance transparency, reproducibility, and trust in both scholarly and creative contexts by making visible the decision trails behind content creation, including permissions, collaborations, and citations.

Applications of authortieto include scholarly publishing, repositories, and content-management systems where there is an emphasis on attribution and traceability. It can support workflows for rigorous peer review, version control, and later reuse of content, while also facilitating accountability for factual accuracy and methodological soundness. Challenges include agreeing on what to record, balancing openness with privacy, protecting intellectual property, and developing interoperable standards for representing such knowledge across platforms. Ongoing discussions continue about how best to integrate authortieto into existing metadata schemas and publication ecosystems.